


Myling

by windbetweenthestars



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alaska, Gen, Ghosts, Infanticide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 18:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2517899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windbetweenthestars/pseuds/windbetweenthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alaska, 2007. Rust encounters some placeless dead in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Myling

_“All these countless variations of legends, pronouncements, and beliefs have a common core, namely: a dead human being who has been criminally put to death, who has been left unburied or unbaptised, or who has not been provided with the necessary material provisions for the journey into beyond, reveals their awe-inspiring, “errant” condition to the living in one way or another, announcing their desire for the improvement for their fate.”_

* * *

 

Winter is not much of a fishing season, and it’s foul onboard during the coldest months. So Rust gets some logging gigs every now and then, more or less illegal, since lumber has not been a proper Alaskan industry for ages. The work’s not entirely unpleasant. The forests are as he remembers them: clean and airy, orderly, not anything like the green creeping mess back South.

He parks his truck on a forest clearing. When the day is done, he smokes and stares at the darkening skies for a minute. Leaves, drinks, sleeps.

It’s mid-October when he hears the crying for the first time. Muffled, quiet sobs at first. As the days pass, the wailing increases. Some bird, he reckons. A gray jay, most likely.

But this fucking bird is one of a kind. It speaks.

_mama mama hear me out_  
_the ice it cuts my soles_  
_my feet are sore from needles_  
_please mama I’m so cold_

He slams the cabin-door shut and reaches for his racing pulse. Hearing things on a daily basis, yes, but words? Rhymes? Never.

It’s Friday. He checks into the bar and drinks the weekend through, methodically, as his life depends on it.

Monday, through the thickening darkness, he feels the closest thing to actual fear for a long long time. The naked, white-fleshed child sits on a pile of lumber and stares at him with an almost quizzical expression. He pretends not seeing it. Ignoring the visions has worked just fine before. Though Marty’s been there so often, hovering on Rust’s orbit as a constant solid mass, a beacon for reality. He’s on his own now.

Next evening he meets the child again. So much for reality. It’s waiting for him, all translucent ghost-lips, blond wisps of hair and a bundle of oddly ageless limbs. And an umbilical cord, still attached to the white round belly. Rust blinks, crushes the cigarette under his heel and starts his truck. Hallucinations with regular habits. This is new, but there’s a first time for every damn thing.

The days pass. He’s being offered a new verse every night.

_hear me mama hear me_  
_you left me on my own_  
_without clothes or cover_  
_under tree and stone_  
  
_I need to travel yonder_  
_I need to rest and sleep_  
_but without shoes I cannot_  
_the snow is much too deep_  
  
_if you find my mama_  
_bring her to my bones_  
_I will suck her breasts_  
_for marrow, milk and blood_  
  
_there’s a house on crossroads_  
_you’ll find my mother there_  
_oh she’s a pretty sight she is_  
_a crimson skirt she wears_

  
The child is riding a branch of a tree, eight feet high, rocking it to the rhythm of its eerie tune. There’s something gleaming on the branch collar. He climbs, clicks his knife and forces a golden bracelet open. It’s plain and worn, a name engraved inside.

The shit Rust’s in is much deeper than he expected. This is the severest twist in his reality since 02, the last cop-months in the poisonous vapor of Louisiana. But for a reason unknown he needs to act along now. 

“Somebody left this  behind, huh? Wanna find her?” he says and throws the golden ring to the creature. He gestures towards the back of the truck, and the ghost-child jumps in. Its monotonous wailing accompanies the roar of the F250 engine. As the forest road crosses a small stream, the noises suddenly cease. He checks the back of the truck. No-one. Save for a lonely piece of jewellery.

That night he heads for a different bar, a strip-club of sorts. The Junction. Even here in the middle of nowhere, the token few prostitutes stand vigil for the occasional needy or lonely. The blonde in a skimpy red skirt sits on the corner.

“Got something of yours” he says, dropping the bracelet on the table, “…Anna?”

Her working-girl mask drains down and reveals something raw, ancient and weary. “I’m Lizzie” she answers. “Anna, she was my great-grandma. That’s the only possession she brought from the old country. Haven’t seen the thing in years.”

“Someone wants you” he says and points vaguely outside.

The woman rises abruptly: “Gotta go. The ladies’ ” and disappears, but not before she’s snatched the golden band into her purse. It leaves a cold moist ring on the table. A shiver sneaks through Rust’s spine. Suddenly he tastes resin and acidic soil and something sweet and rotten. She never returns.

He does not sleep, he dreams.The child has plump red gleaming gums. Its nails have grown. It’s a baby now with gas pains, he takes it on his shoulder to release the malevolent air and the infant starts gnawing its way through his deltoid. It’s hungry, terribly hungry, but he’s run out of milk

milk. Got to get some milk  
  
and before he even notices, he’s awake and driving towards the wild, with no idea what he’s up to except for the fact that it’s fucking urgent.

Rust finds Lizzie crouched under the tree (yes he’s seen all of this before) but this time no-one’s been there the crown her. The grey-white skin is streaked with blood, and her bare breasts embroidered with bite-marks. But she’s still breathing. There’s a bundle on her arms, a ragged scarf, with something dry and rattling inside.

He carries Lizzie to the car and the warm running engine starts to lull her into consciousness again. But there’s something yet that needs to be done, he just doesn’t know what it is.

So he sits in the car, smokes and spoons whiskey to her mouth. And as she warms up, the story unravels.

“I didn’t even know I was with a baby, you know”, she tells him, “and then I just became hella sick and there she was, all blue and loud and tiny. Got no money. No place to go. No idea who the daddy was. It’s not much of a life, having a mom working for the trade. For a girl, it might be even shittier. So I took a pillow. Smothered her, and took her to the woods.”

It’s almost funny how little he feels, hearing all this. “Saved yourself for the sin of being a parent, did ya?” he says, and somehow there’s no rage, no reverted guilt; just a hollow space, the emotions carved long out.

“You know, I really believe none of this shit” he says, “but that thing you’ve got there. The remains of your baby. You might wanna do something about them.”

“Graveyard? But there’s no way to dig anywhere this time of the year” she says, and suddenly he realizes the dead-child has been giving him strict instructions, and he hasn’t really paid attention.

“A shoe? A _safety shoe_?” she protests, but Rust is determined. They collect the tiny brittle bones and skull-bits and stuck them into the boot. “A fucking expensive shoe, to be exact. Well, that kid has a long journey ahead” he says, and after she’s dropped the bracelet on the bones (“I meant her to have it anyway”) they lay some stones over it and drive away.

An awkward silence falls over them in the truck cabin. “So, you’re gonna report me to the cops then?” she finally blurts out. “I am a cop” he says, “no, I was one, and even if I wanted to I have no interest delivering  this testimony. A blood-sucking dead-child hitchin’ a ride to the netherworld? You know, after the night’s done, this is none of my fucking business.”

“Got some kids of your own?” she asks, and he gives her the answer, bluntly, to get it over with. But she continues: “Ever visit her grave?” and now he feels a familiar sting on his gut. 

“I haven’t. Not since the funeral. Never seen the point”. He nearly proceeds to his well-practised rant about the laws of physical existence and the evident absence of any afterlife whatsoever but swallows it all down very quickly.   
  
“Well hon”, she says, “maybe you should.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by several prompts on True Detective Halloween Challenge, and mostly by my recent readings on the dead-child tradition and so-called placeless dead in Nordic folklore. 
> 
> You might ask why I tend to leave Marty out of my scribbles. Well, it’s for dialogue reasons. I could never ever get their voices right. Luckily there are a ton of writers who can. Bless you all.


End file.
